Toward Clarity in this Time of Major Transition

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When I posted Acceleration of Conflict, Part 1in July of 2016, the result was not what I hoped. In an attempt to show the breadth of conflict acceleration, I over-emphasized its global versus its personal dimension. From speaking with readers about the post later, the effect had been for them to see this rise in conflict as taking place “on distant shores,” that is, it had little to do with their life. But by the time of the US presidential election, mentioning the rise of conflict had people immediately realizing its personal impact. Most had been involved in heated and often irrational political discussions with friends, neighbors, and loved ones. It was that type of full-spectrum pervasiveness of conflict energy that I had hoped to convey. It is described well in this transcript of a talk given on June 12, 2016, that is, well before the US presidential election:

There will be continued mass confusion. The American elections will witness this confusion. And there will be battles that are really unprecedented between the parties and between those elements that are involved in the political system. And this goes for every single country in the world…

Now, what type of conflict is this going to be? I can tell you it’s conflict on every level. Mamas will be fighting with their sons, siblings will be fighting among themselves. It will just be scrapping on every level of society, all the way up to outright military confrontation. And this is something I must ask you to grin and bear for the next few years. And life will not be easy because, in addition to the collapse of the financial and economic system, we will have every type of conflict going on. We will be struggling with our own conflicts … The rest of the world will just melt under these conflicts, or they’ll just go crazy.

So what is a person supposed to do about this? That too was well covered in the same transcript:

Be one of those who rises above this scrapping conflict by staying in contact, staying aligned, with one’s soul, one’s higher self or essence, whatever you prefer to call it. People who can stand above the fray will be beacons of light in difficult, possibly dangerous, times.

Realize that this generalized energy of conflict is required to shake apart those forms in our world that keep humanity enslaved; that once the conflict has served its purpose, we will emerge into a far more peaceful, free, and beautiful world.

Does that mean injustice should go unopposed? Not at all. What I am talking about is avoiding the “identity theft” of getting so swept up in the energy of conflict that one forgets one’s true identity.

Everyone has heard of the opioid epidemic sweeping the US. Recent reports have shown that more people are dying each year in the US from opioid drug overdoses than US soldiers were killed during the entire War in Vietnam. And alcohol abuse is skyrocketing:

Clearly, many people are trying to deaden themselves to the impact of accelerating energies, with some succeeding all too well. This is unfortunate since these energies can be used like an inner “alarm clock” reminding one to use their attention to get back into contact with who they really are.

As a side-note, if you think Afghanistan has always been a hell-hole of conflict, here is a what it looked like around 1970: before the “great” powers decided it was an important country in their quest for domination:

Yikes. These were just the “newsworthy” items that found me on the sites I typically read, I did not go out looking for them. It’s very likely that some searching would turn up more of the same, especially in the Middle East, which often receives scant treatment in the Western press. As an indication of that, according to the Washington Post:

Since the beginning of 2015, the Middle East, Africa and Asia have seen nearly 50 times more deaths from terrorism than Europe and the Americas.

The Middle East and northern Africa account for over two-thirds of terrorism deaths since January 2015, with multiple attacks occurring daily, each claiming on average at least a dozen lives.

So what principles are being demonstrated through these events? First, we are seeing:

Acceleration of insanity, which has beenmentionedanddocumented, especially including excruciating detail of insanity in the financial world.*It is difficult to not see rampant examples of insanity on this planet at this time so that documenting them seems almost needless to say.

Next, we are seeing:

Acceleration of conflict. Conflict is on the rise in so many (all?) fields of human endeavor. We may even find ourselves in scrappy conflicts these days, even with loved ones, often with trivial causes. (We’ll talk about what to do about that in Part 2.) In public, we see political parties, and factions within political parties, at each other throats, with the factions screaming each other down at political conventions; governments seemingly at war with their own people; inter-racial hatred; religious wars; police versus citizens; hackers waging cyber-warfare with governments, corporations, anyone; environmentalists versus resource extractors and polluters; organic growers versus Industrial Food; Big Pharma versus the alternative health care field; Monsanto versus democracy; global warming versus global cooling factions…well, it goes on and on. Read the seething Comments sections on popular internet sites…on second thought, don’t!

Acceleration of the Wheeler Cycle of War and Political Change, described here and updated here.

And because this is another principle in play:

The transition through which we and the planet are going is taking place across the energetic spectrum.

that war energy from the Cycle of War does not impact only the military and political spheres, it impacts nearly everything, as we are seeing.

Worse still, as explained in a previous post on the Cycle of War, this instance of that cycle began around October, 2014. However:

The worst part of this is: major wars begin around the cycle date, but the fighting generally builds to its greatest intensity four to six years after the start date.

So perhaps general conflict will finally peak and then start to wind down sometime between late 2018 and late 2020. Until then, the likely scenario is accelerating intensity of conflict. If things play out that way, then two other principles are being demonstrated:

Life moves in cycles, not straight lines.

Based on past repetitions, the starting points and duration of some cycles can be usefully estimated.

The world defense market climbed to $65 billion in 2015, up by $6.6 billion from 2014 the consulting company IHS Inc said in its Global Defence Trade Report. That’s the largest yearly increase in the past decade, led by Saudi purchases which jumped about 50% to $9.3 billion in 2015 according to Bloomberg.

…the United States was the top weapons exporter in 2015, supplying almost $23 billion in goods and equipment, of which $8.8 billion went to the Middle East.

Yes, that’s the same Saudi Arabia that beheads more people than Daesh (IS), but it’s a US “ally” (or does that mean good weapons customer?), so few in the press will discuss it.

After two years of bombing, the U.S. recently marked a horrendous milestone in a war with no clear end in sight. Vocativ reported that the American-led coalition in the Middle East has now dropped 50,000 bombs in the ongoing campaign against ISIS that began in August 2014.

The U.S. Navy, which has already developed a 30-kilowatt laser that has been used operationally, will soon test a new directed energy weapon that is five times more powerful, said the vice chief of naval operations July 23.

The Office of Naval Research “will perform a shipboard test of a 150-killowatt laser weapon system in the near future,” said Adm. Bill Moran during a speech at Booz Allen Hamilton’s Directed Energy Summit, which was held in Washington, D.C.

The Navy’s 30-kilowatt laser weapon is currently onboard the USS Ponce. The system, which has been used operationally in the Persian Gulf, offers military leaders precision accuracy at a low cost, Moran said.

The laser weapon system, or LaWs, “has an extremely low-cost per engagement ratio,” he said. “We’re spending pennies on the dollars … every time we use that capability.”

While the U.S. military is developing laser weapons that can be installed on platforms across the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, military leaders must be cognizant that potential adversaries are as well, Moran said.

“These technologies are being developed and fielded by a growing number of countries all around the world, it’s not just us,” he said. “If we don’t get ahead of that capability by our adversaries, we’re going to find ourselves in a very difficult position in the future.”

As the Navy considers its future fleet design, laser weapons must be a part of the equation, Moran said.

“If we have to continue to rely on projectiles, propellant-driven projectiles, we will run out of our ability to defend ourselves over time,” he said. “This capability in directed energy is incredibly important.”

And of course, drones. Here’s a 6 minute video that shows how weapons are now marketed. The only thing missing is a Hollywood star or two. This one advertises the latest drone in General Atomics product line:

Remember that support for all this comes from the major political parties in each country. That’s where money gets spent to assure that candidates are placed in office who will support these programs.

The US sends so much military hardware to the Middle East that there are battles where both sides have had their armaments supplied by the US. Sometimes US troops are being killed by US-made weapons. This is from one of the most conservative newspapers in the US, the Chicago Tribune, not some anti-war site:

Weapons shipped into Jordan by the Central Intelligence Agency … intended for Syrian rebels have been systematically stolen by Jordanian intelligence operatives and sold to arms merchants on the black market, according to American and Jordanian officials.

Despite all the spending, according to NPR, the US nuclear arsenal is controlled by systems with floppy disks (hat/tip to RG for the link):

Over the course of the past few months, the United States has pushed NATO to build up troops on Russia’s border, held war games in its backyard, and deployed aircraft carriers to the Mediterranean. The rationale for such actions has always been very vaguely communicated, but as NATO European Command General Philip Breedlove said, it has all been to send a signal of deterrence to Russia. However, the reality is that, according to General Petr Pavel, chairman of the NATO Military Committee,there is no intelligence that suggests Russia is planning any broad-scale aggression whatsoever.

In a unanimous decision at their 84th annual conference, the United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) passed a resolution condemning President Barack Obama’s decision to set the U.S. on track to spend $1 trillion over the next 30 years to “maintain and modernize its nuclear bombs and warheads, production facilities, delivery systems, and command and control.”

Stay tuned for Part 2.

________

*Speaking of insanity in the financial world, between the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of Japan (BOJ), the central banks of the world are now printing up $180 Billion per month. There are only two national governments in the world that spend that much per month, the US and China. And what are they doing with all that new money printed from nothing? Buying bonds and stocks! A billion people on the planet don’t have clean water (half the hospital beds in the world are occupied by someone with a water-borne illness) or enough food each day, not to mention reasonable health care, and these bozos are printing up money to prop up asset markets, making the rich richer, to get everyone to think that everything is OK. The BOJ is one of the Top 10 shareholders of 90% of Japanese companies and the ECB is buying bonds with negative interest rates. That’s the best thing they can think of to do with $180 Billion per month. And these are allegedly intelligent people? Sane people?

Volcanoes

In the 20th Century, there were 35 volcanic eruptions on average over the entire year; this year, there are 38 volcanoes in an active state of eruptionright now! This is non-trivial. Mitch Battros posted this today:

A new study in the April 22 edition of the journal ‘Science’, reveals that volcanic activity associated with the plate-tectonic movement of continents may be responsible for climatic shifts from hot to cold throughout much of Earth’s history. The study, led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin Jackson School of Geosciences, addresses why Earth has fluctuated from periods when the planet was covered in ice to times when polar regions were ice-free…

…cooling periods tended to correlate with the assembly of Earth’s supercontinents, which was a time of diminished continental volcanism, Horton said. The warming periods correlated with continental breakup, a time of enhanced continental volcanism.

So enhanced volcanism leads not only to the melting of the icecaps and thus strongly rising sea levels–sea levels would rise over 200 feet if the icecaps melted–it is also “correlated with continental breakup.“In such a situation, one would expect a bigincrease in earthquakes, which is occurring, as demonstrated above.

More than 200 people suffered injuries and about 400 structures have been affected, said Uruguayan Sen. Guillermo Besozzi. Images from the city showed overturned cars piled on top of one other, shattered windows and decimated buildings…The National Institute of Meteorology has yet to determine the scale of the tornado. “There are businesses in the center of the city, completely destroyed. Schools, churches destroyed. This is something never seen before. This is something out of the normal for our country,” Besozzi said.

Sinkholes

Sinkholes are becoming so commonplace that they have been draining small lakes and ponds, and now they have drained three rivers in Mexico. The photo below shows the before-and-after of the Atoyac River:

Thundering Heard

Does this give you an idea of why this site is called Thundering Heard? Each heading in this post could have been shown as “Thundering Heard: Earthquakes” or “Thundering Heard: Volcanoes,” but that would have been annoying. Still, the idea is always there. There is thundering heard on the horizon across much of the energetic spectrum. Beyond earth changes, think about national politics, geopolitics, the state of the oceans, the financial system, health care, the legal system, the oil business, education, and so forth. All systems seem to be experiencing convulsions; many are being shaken to their core. We are now all accustomed to hearing words like deflation, decline, destruction, failure, and collapse in a variety of contexts.

This site tries to remind of some of these thunderings as food for thought.

Rates for Capesize-class ships [pictured above] plummeted 92 percent since August to $1,563 a day amid slowing growth in China. That’s less than a third of the daily rate of 3,950 pounds ($5,597) to rent a Ferrari F40, the price of which has also fallen slightly in the past few years, according to Nick Hardwick, founder of supercarexperiences.com.

But here’s what it looks like at street level, since it also has no tenants:

But these types of expenditures make it seem like the economy is humming along, that is, it’s great for the economic statistics, even if the activity makes little or no sense.

So what is a developer with no tenants to do? Apparently, take action: “This 27-storey high-rise building which was completed on November 15th 2015 was just demolished, ‘having been left unused for too long.’ ”

Many people claim the estimated 65 million empty flats held as investments by the middle and upper classes in China will be sold to new buyers in due time. But these complacent analysts overlook the grim reality that the vast majority of urban workers make around $6,000 to $10,000 annually, and a $200,000 flat is permanently out of reach.

Average flats in Beijing now cost 22X annual household income — roughly six times the income-price ratio that is sustainable (3 or 4 X income = affordable cost of a house).

Perhaps we should send that Chinese demolition crew to Vancouver. If you think you’ve seen a real estate bubble where you live, check out this one:

I hope that plastic chair is included in the price. OK, so the Canadian Dollar has lost 26% of its “value” over the last two years. But still, $2.4 million? Checking the listing, one finds:

These normally sell new for $1 million, used for $250,000, but here’s one where the high auction bid is $50 at a site in Lousiana, USA:

And it has companions, with a high bid of $100 for this:

and this one has a high bid of $10:

I guess the oil and real estate businesses are not exactly booming in Louisiana. Though it isn’t just Louisiana. Here is a chart of worldwide sales by bulldozer-maker Caterpillar for the last six years. It shows that their sales have been declining for 36 months in a row. All of those bars, starting in 2013, that extend below the zero line (shown in the red oval) show the percentage decline in sales. And this is during the alleged “economic recovery.” I wonder what this chart will look like next time the authorities admit to the anti-recovery:

Here are two charts from a Jeremy Grantham article “Give Me Only Good News” in which he documents how easily manipulated and delusional Americans can be. You know how business people who call themselves “job creators” often claim that America is so much better for business than France since France is run by a bunch of socialists who are bad for business? And that “bad for business” means bad for people since only ever-expanding and profitable businesses can create jobs and grow wages for people in the long run? And people believe all that? Well here’s a chart showing what they actually mean. It shows that real (adjusted for inflation) wages in France are up 2.7-fold since 1970, whereas US real wages are actually lower than they were in 1970. Wage growth in the US badly lags that in other countries:

So, it’s good for business owners in America, not so good for the workers. Want more proof? Here’s a chart of the gini coefficient for industrialized countries. The gini coefficient measures wealth disparity, that is, it is taken as the best measure available for income inequality. Here is Grantham’s “At Least We Live in a Fair Society” delusion chart showing that only Turkey and Mexico have greater income inequality than the US, and that the US is much worse now than it was in 1980:

Speaking of easily manipulated, you know how Wall St always tells people to not worry about stock market declines, that “stocks always make money in the long run”? And most people believe it. Well here’s a chart of the stock market of Cyprus for the last nine years:

That’s a 99.986% loss, folks. One has to wonder how long the “long run” will be in Cyprus. Of course, the EU and the IMF famously “fixed” Cyprus with the first of the bank bail-ins, in which depositor money was confiscated to keep a large bank from insolvency. Good thing for non-Cypriot stock markets that there won’t be any more bank bail-ins. Oh wait: this is from EU takes six countries to court over bank bailout scheme:

The EU on Thursday said it would take six member states to court for failing to implement a European-wide plan…

for bank bail-ins. (All industrialized economies now have bank bail-in rules on the books.) In other words, the authorities are trying to get ready for the inevitable next time things really hit the fan.

Sounds like a good idea. Getting ready, that is. (Side note: Getting ready takes a good deal of thought. And work. And time.)

Currently, the world is experiencing the turbulence phase in this video. Sooner or later, the bridge will collapse:

Most people likely heard that on December 15, the US Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time in nine years. Nine years! And by a measly 1/4 of a percent. With high Madison Avenue puffery, they called this “liftoff”! And why now? Because, they claim, finally, after telling us at the end of every year, for the last six years, that the economy would accelerate in the new year and be able to grow on its own without their “extraordinary measures” (their phrase, not mine) of support, they are declaring, like Bullwinkle, “This time for sure!”

Stock markets are, of course, throwing a tantrum, off to their worst start to a new year ever, screaming, “What?! No more free money for the rich?! You mean we’ll actually have to do something to get money, like–uuuugh–poor people do?”

Worst start ever for other countries as well, including Europe as a whole. The 600 largest European stocks (EuroStoxx 600) are down 21% from their peak in April, officially qualifying them for a bear market. Same with China, their stocks lost 21% in the last four weeks (since the Fed raised rates) and are down 44% since their peak in June:

Still, many people, especially in the US, believe we are in a global bull market in stocks; despite the fact that US smaller company stocks (Russell 2000 index) are down 22% since their peak in June, 2015. And US Transportation stocks (truckers, airlines, shippers, etc.), which are an excellent barometer of economic activity, are down 28% since their peak.

Even in the midst of this stock market tantrum, a desperate US President said last week that everything is awesome and that “Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction.” Forget about those 45 million US residents on food stamps, and a record number of homeless children, everything is supposedly great. And there was this desperation from the Fed on Friday:

January 15 – Bloomberg (Matthew Boesler): “The U.S. economy should continue to grow faster than its potential this year, supporting further interest-rate increases by the Federal Reserve,” New York Fed President William C. Dudley said. ‘In terms of the economic outlook, the situation does not appear to have changed much since the Fed’s Dec. 15-16 meeting,’ Dudley said, in remarks prepared for a speech Friday… He added that he continues ‘to expect that the economy will expand at a pace slightly above its long-term trend in 2016…’

(Digression: Only someone involved in pseudo-scientific economics is typically deranged enough to try to explain how something can “grow faster than its potential.” Perhaps we should each send our favorite economist a dictionary.)

Why do I call these statements desperation?

For starters, the Federal Reserve’s best computer model for the economy says that the economy is growing at a 0.6% annual rate. That’s less than 1% a year, folks. In other words, stall speed.

I’ve talked here before about the usefulness of economic statistics that governments don’t publish since the governments can’t fake them. I won’t bore you with a lot of them, but here’s one that will give you an excellent idea of the state of things. It shows, over the last 30 years, the cost to companies to transport bulks goods (wheat, copper, coal, oil, iron ore, etc.) by cargo ship around the planet:

The first thing to notice is that it costs less to ship cargo now than it has at any time in the last 30 years. And it’s cheaper by a wide margin. If the economy were doing well, cargo ships would be in high demand and charging high prices. That’s hardly the case now; quite the opposite.

Next, check that blue oval at the top of the chart. The index was over 10,000 in early 2008. That was a period of high demand for shipping. It’s useful to know that owners of large ocean-going cargo vessels currently break even when the price they can charge for shipping is between 800 and 1,000 on this index. So with shipping costs as high as they were in 2008, the owners of ships were making a LOT of money–they could charge more than 10 times their expenses for fuel, salaries, maintenance, etc. Now the price is below 400. So the ship owners lose money on every shipment. Competing owners of cargo ships continue to ship at these low prices, even though they are losing money, because they hope their competitors will go bankrupt before they do.

Why is it so cheap to ship goods around the world now? Because global trade and the global economy are tanking, and far fewer goods are being shipped than a few years back. Here’s a chart by HSBC of growth of the global economy calculated in US Dollars. Notice that the line is well below zero for 2015, just like it was in 2009:

So the Fed and other cheerleaders might say: Yes, the world economy is down, but the US has “decoupled” from the world and is doing fine on its own. Well, here’s a perfect depiction of the US economy. It’s a chart of US Industrial Production over the last 45 years:

Industrial Production in the US is down over the last year; there’s 1.8% less of it than a year ago. The red-shaded areas on the chart are past recessions. As the dashed line shows, whenever Industrial Production has been this low in the past, we have always already been in a recession. Always. No exceptions.

Governments (and 99 out of 100 economists) announce recessions with a huge lag time. Leading up to the announcement, just when it would help people to be battening down the hatches, they always claim everything is fine and there won’t be a recession, so we should all hold onto our stocks, hold onto our real estate, spend, borrow, and spend some more. Then the long delay in admitting to the recession allows them to say, “Yes, a recession started 10 months ago, but now it’s either over or almost over, so don’t worry, everything is fine. Spend, borrow, and spend some more.”

The Fed’s Dudley also said this week that, if the economy weakened, they would consider negative interest rates for the US. Canadian central bankers say the same. And it has worked so well in Europe! (Ha!) Europe’s delusional central bankers thought that negative interest rates would spur people and companies to save less and spend more. What actually happened? Bank of America explained here that as rates went negative and people couldn’t earn interest on their savings, they saved more, not less. In other words, people, unlike the delusional bankers, are being logical: if they can’t earn any interest, then they have to save more for their future plans, not less. Here are the charts showing exactly this relationship (as rates go down, savings go up) for the negative rate champions Switzerland, Denmark, and Sweden:

European business also failed to fall for the negative rates trick. Instead of borrowing and spending more, they have been pulling in their horns and retiring some of their outstanding debt instead of borrowing more.

The individual can think different and the individual can act different than those that got us all into this mess. No matter how the economic tides may sweep away the majority, an individual can stand clear.

More than ever, it is crucial to understand that “society’s sanctioned suits,” as Burry labels them so well, do not have your best interests in mind. They have their own interests in mind. Period. And their desperation, delusions, and derangements have created an inevitable economic calamity that will be the greatest in history.

People told me they liked the recently-released movie The Big Short based on the book of the same name by Michael Lewis, so I did go to see it at a theater, something I’m loathe to do these days because the theaters seem determined to crush all human sensitivity out of their patrons during the overlong and overloud Coming Retractions segment that precedes the main show. Seems to me that earplugs are a better theater accessory these days than 3D glasses.

Anyway, the movie has been well-received by both critics and audiences. It is a well-crafted dramatization of the true story of a few traders who foresaw the collapse of the housing bubble and figured out how to make large profits from that event. It shows aspects of the lead-up and crash that are not well-known by the public. And it shows the vitriol and threats directed at anyone who sees important events sooner than the general public, especially when what they see means that people are going to lose some or all of their elusive spondulix.

The main character is Michael Burry, who not only foresaw the coming real estate bubble collapse, but had a very good idea of just how devastating it would be for the economy. It’s exceedingly rare for the hero of a movie to be someone as intelligent as Burry.

But more important than the movie is what Burry is doing these days. Remember, Burry does intelligent things before the crowd. He’s a rather private fellow, but has made a few public appearances, one on 60 Minutes, and this one on Bloomberg where he talked about what he was currently buying–farmland with water on site, and gold:

Here is Burry giving a fabulous commencement speech at UCLA in 2012. Burry’s speech starts at the 2:15 into the video:

Selected quotes:

It’s an age of infinite distraction, for those so willing. You are the generation that has had instant messaging, Facebook, Twitter, an angry bird nagging your fingertips at every moment. It’s been arguably as addictive as any drug throughout history, and I do imagine, it took some terrific will power during your studies … to study.

…

In 2010, I published an op-ed in the New York Times posting what I thought was a valid question of the Federal Reserve, Congress, and the President. I saw the crisis coming … why did not the Fed? Never did any member of Congress, any member of government for the matter, reach out to me for an open collegial discussion on what went wrong or what could be done. Rather, within two weeks, all six of my defunct funds were audited. The Congressional Financial Finance Inquiry Commission demanded all my emails and lists of people with whom I conversed going back to 2003, and a little later the FBI showed up. A million in legal and accounting costs and thousands of hours of time wasted – all because I asked questions. It seemed they would pump me at gun point or not at all. That summer the Federal Reserve put out a paper that concluded nothing in the field of economics or finance could have predicted what happened with regards to the housing bust and subsequent economic fallout. Ben Bernanke continues to backfill this logic and I fear that history is being written wrong yet again. The ignorance is willful.

I am shocked that executives at some of the worst lenders were not punished for what they did. But this is the nature of these things. The ones running the machine did not get punished after the dot-com bubble either — all those VCs and dot-com executives still live in their mansions lining the 280 corridor on the San Francisco peninsula. The little guy will pay for it — the small investor, the borrower. Which is why the little guy needs to be warned to be more diligent and to be more suspicious of society’s sanctioned suits offering free money. It will always be seductive, but that’s the devil that wants your soul.

…

The zero interest-rate policy broke the social contract for generations of hardworking Americans who saved for retirement, only to find their savings are not nearly enough. And the interest the Federal Reserve pays on the excess reserves of lending institutions … handcuffed lending to small and midsized enterprises, where the majority of job creation and upward mobility in wages occurs. Government policies and regulations in the post-crisis era have aided the hollowing-out of middle America…These changes even expanded the wealth gap by making asset owners richer at the expense of renters. Maybe there are some positive changes in there, but it seems I fail to see beyond the absurdity.

…

All these people found others to blame, and to that extent, an unhelpful narrative was created. Whether it’s the one percent or hedge funds or Wall Street, I do not think society is well served by failing to encourage every last American to look within.

…

Americans have so much natural entrepreneurial drive. The caveat is that it is technology that should be a tool making lives better in the real world, and in line with the American spirit of getting better and better at something, whether it’s curing cancer or creating a better taxi service. I am less impressed with the market values assigned to technology that enhances distraction.

So folks, do you have your farmland with water on site and some gold? Are you looking within and working like mad to avoid formidable distraction? Or are you following a path designed by what Burry calls “society’s sanctioned suits” offering free money and a million tantalizing distractions?

—That the Greek people would strike a major blow for light in our world! A group of people finally said NO to the reinstatement of debtor’s prisons in which entire countries are placed in such prisons by the Banker Politician Axis known in polite circles as our international financial system. The previous “bailouts” of Greece were not for Greece, they were for the bankers, the lenders:

Yet the Greek people ended up with more debt on their backs and with austerity plans from the “great minds” at the EU, ECB, and IMF that have kept their economy shrinking further each year so that it is now about 25% smaller than in was in 2006. In other words, Greece has been going backwards financially: more and more debt, smaller and smaller economy. Why should they put up with more of this? To their credit, today the people of Greece gave a resounding NO to further strangulation by the EU.

And who could have predicted:

—In the late 1980’s, that Japan Inc. would not take over the world. Starting at the end of 1989, the Japanese economy was revealed to be not an invincible powerhouse but rather a real estate and stock market bubble, the collapse from which Japan is still reeling because—as pointed out repeatedly in the 1990’s and early 2000’s by pontificating central bankers from the West—the Japanese refused to bite the bullet and let the bankrupt go bankrupt and kept zombie banks alive by financial trickery, something the Western central bankers also did starting in 2008 when faced with the same bankruptcy situation of their own banks. And all central bankers (except those in Iceland: they bit the bullet and it worked out far better for them—their debts are now much smaller and their economy is larger than it was in 2007) are still doing exactly that. To keep up appearances, Japan has printed up so much money to buy so much government debt that their national debt is now 19 times annual tax revenues. (Think about that from a person’s point of view. Let’s say the person makes $50,000 per year, and they have to live off that, but they also owe 19 times that, $950,000. How can they ever pay off the debt? Even if they tried to pay off $10,000 per year, the interest on $950,000 at 3% is $28,500, so they would owe $18,500 more every year.) Gee, Japan sounds worse than Greece! Way worse. And here’s a graphic of the US government’s debt:

—In the late 1980’s, that the USSR would collapse. The USSR was a superpower! But it turned out that the USSR, which made most of its money from commodities such as oil, diamonds, platinum, etc., was unable to withstand the collapse in the prices of all of those commodities in the 1980’s and their entire economy collapsed, taking their overreaching political system down with it. But they hid their problems so well that the CIA incompetently thought the Russian economy was three times larger than it actually turned out to be. Either that or the CIA needed a fake “strong” enemy to boost its own budget.

—In the late 1990’s, that internet stocks would collapse in 2000. It was the new paradigm! If you didn’t believe it, you “just didn’t get it.” Who could have known that Webvan, Pets.com, and EToys.com would go from riches to not even rags?

—In 2007, that real estate prices would collapse. Real estate prices always go up, don’t you know? And they aren’t making any more land! And it’s always a good time to buy! And other lies, too! Tell all that to the 7 million households that were foreclosed upon just in the US in the last decade.

Who could have predicted those things? Well, a few people correctly predicted each of those big changes. But they were generally derided or ignored.

What’s the point of the list? Well, that things change. Sometimes they change in a big way. And sometimes in a hurry:

And we are living in a time about which it’s very easy to argue that we have simultaneous global bubbles in government bonds (think negative interest rates!), stocks (many indexes are higher than they were during previous peaks that were later admitted to be bubbles), and real estate. Don’t think it’s a real estate bubble? This house in San Francisco sold for $1.21 million in March:

It does have one bedroom. And the bathroom is outside! Ah, the fresh air! And the neighborhood is crime-ridden! At least the one in San Francisco was in a good neighborhood, so the $1.21 million was probably for the lot, that is, the house was a knocker-downer, not a fixer-upper.

And with the exponential increase in electronic money printing by governments, it’s easy to argue for a fourth bubble, a currency bubble as well. And people and groups are now making up their own currencies: barter currencies and electronic cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. In fact, you can go to sites like CoinCreator.net and create your own cryptocurrency. They claim they’ve created over 4,000 new currencies for people. This site tracks the current price of 653 new cryptocurrencies!

What will be the impact of the Greek vote? The fact that the debt of many (most!) countries is unpayable will now begin to emerge into the mass consciousness. During this latest round of negotiations between Greece and the Troika (EU, ECB, and IMF), the Greek representatives, Varoufakis and Tsipras, have repeatedly tried to explain that the debts of Greece are unpayable, that Greece needs debt relief, debt restructuring. But the Troika played hard ball and said that was out of the question, that Greece had to pay its existing debts fully. But then just over a week ago, someone leaked an internal IMF document that clearly showed that the Greeks were right, that existing Greek debts could never be paid! This allowed Tsipras to go to the people with the backing of that IMF document to urge a NO vote on more strangulation plans from the Troika. Tsipras was able to say, “See, we told you the truth. The Troika knew the truth, but lied about it. Who do you want to trust going forward?”

Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France, yes France, come immediately to mind as countries that will never be able to pay their debts. And now that the IMF has admitted the truth about Greece, they will be overrun with requests to show the same for these other countries, all of whom, like Greece, have had rising debts and contracting economies since 2007. This chart shows the 15 to 20% declines in production in Italy, Spain, and, France since 2007:

So the dominoes will now start to fall because these and many other countries have unpayable debts. People will start to understand this.

All we want is truth! Why are these so-called leaders (some of them will be shown in two bonus photos below) so afraid of truth? Well, it was explained well here last week: The truth is that these leaders sold out their own electorates, placing the bad bets of the commercial banks on the backs of their own citizens, making the bankers whole and putting their voters on the hook for unpayable debts. And all of their great plans have been complete failures–except if their plans were to pad banker bonuses. They really don’t want this to be made obvious to everyone in each of their own countries. Getting kicked out of office will be one of their lesser worries.

With the exception of the 2007 event listed above, the other events were mostly local to one country. The one in 2007 almost took down the global financial system. This current bubble-plex (multiple bubbles at once) is global in nature, and will have global systemic consequences. It involves bubbles (debt and currencies) that are the very fiber of the world financial system. The period from September, 2015 through December, 2017 will bring deeper and more dramatic change than most people, even me, can envision. It helps a lot to be ready for change. Inside and outside, some say that preparation is everything.

What are the central banks doing about this? Well, they have been printing money to try to fill the holes that have continually been opening up in the system since 2007. What the smarter ones have also been doing since 2007 is buying gold instead of selling it:

I sincerely hope you have been “importing” some as well. Perhaps the US has a (war?) plan to win the game shown in the following cartoon, but at this point, it sure looks like they are losing this game in a big way:

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And as a special bonus, here is a photo of some of these world “leaders” marching “with the people” in France after the Charlie Hebdo shootings. The photos and related videos were plastered all over the mainstream media:

And here’s the reality of that “with the people” thing:

Totally staged! That’s a good description of these people: totally staged.

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And since the Greek people have put me in a very pleasant frame of mind, here’s bonus #2: Make sure not to step in any sinkholes:

And Bonus #3 is a question. The winning answer will receive the first ThunderingHeardBuck created at CoinCreator.net. OK, that’s a joke, but the question is very serious: It used to take generations for people to fall for the next bubble. For many decades following the Tulip Bubble or the South Sea Bubble, people were too smart to fall for a bubble. It took generations for the memory to pass. So the question is: How come we have new major bubbles every seven or so years now?